


as they turn your dream to shame

by dumbkili



Series: Little Ghosts [2]
Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Injury within the nightmares, Nightmares, Platonic Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 06:24:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3436829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dumbkili/pseuds/dumbkili
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a continuation of my fic 'Different'.</p><p>When you're lost in a sea of nightmares and your sleeping mind brings no peace, sometimes all you can do is hold onto each other and wait out the storm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	as they turn your dream to shame

Sometimes Wirt wondered about things. People and places. Nouns. All that. He sometimes wondered if it was all real. He’d pinch himself sometimes, and feel the sharp little pain, and wonder why he didn’t wake up. It all seemed too good to be true- the last night in their town, the moment at the top of the wall, looking down at the lights of the neighborhood. The running, the swimming, the beating heart and the moon flipping upside down.

 

He sometimes wondered how it all didn’t melt away at the slightest touch, dripping down the pages of his mind like watery paint. Sometimes he would reach out and grab Beatrice’s shoulder, or Greg’s hand, just to reassure himself that they were real. That he was real. That it had worked, and that they were here. Sometimes Greg did the same thing, reaching out blindly as they marched through the forest doing this or that, visiting and shopping and exploring. He’d catch onto the hem of Wirt’s cape as if he were still small and in need of guidance, and they’d walk like that for a long ways.

 

It was these creeping feelings of doubt and of insecurity that sometimes led to nightmares. Horrible, wake-up-shouting, stomach clenching nightmares. Both brothers got them in equal measure, and sometimes Beatrice would wake up with one as well. And although they were each three different people, the dreams were all very similar.

 

Greg would fall asleep quickly, tucked into his small bedroom at the back of the house the three of them shared. He slept small and curled in on himself, his back to the wall. He dreamed of the lake, ten years ago and right that second, the deep, dark, timeless lake. He dreamed of leafy plants that wrapped around his hands and pulled him down into the blackness, down where he could not see or hear anything. Sometimes, when he had this dream, he would be unable to hold his breath and he’d cough, surprised, and see the white glint of a rib bone poking out of his chest in a reddish cloud of water. Other times, he looked to his right and saw Wirt floating there. Dead, motionless, defeated Wirt, and Greg would be alone, beneath the plants and beneath the water.

 

_“Wirt?”_

_“Yeah, Greg?”_

_“Do you ever… dream about- about that night?”_

_“Which night?”_

_“The night we came here for good.”_

_“...”_

_“Wirt?”_

_“No. I never do.”_

 

Wirt dreamed of being pulled from the water the first time, when he was just fourteen years old and squeaky voiced and scared. He could _feel_ things in that dream- the wet fabric of his cape, the sickly-sweet lake water coating his tongue. His dreams always ended the same way: with a red-cheeked paramedic asking him where his brother was, that they couldn’t find him, where was he where was he where was he and _why didn’t you protect him, Wirt? Why couldn’t you just protect him-_ and in his dream he’d scream in denial and rush toward the lake, searching desperately, and he could feel _everything_ and it _hurt_ \- And then he would wake up, the scream dying in the back of his mouth as he breathed in cool autumn air. He hated that dream, and sometimes he would stay up for days to avoid it, forgetting that sleeping was required now, and not just something to do to pass the time. Beatrice would find him passed out at his desk sometimes, or curled up asleep in the parlor, and she’d shake her head and sigh and get him a blanket. She never told either of the boys about _her_ dreams.

 

_“Bea?”_

_“Hmm?”_

_“Are you okay? You’re looking at me funny.”_

_“It’s nothing. Just… remembering a dream I had.”_

_“Do you wanna talk about it?”_

_“No.”_

Her dreams were dark, confused things, seen through the eyes of a bird. A small bird, hopping to and fro between hands and heads and tables, and in her dreams she could not tap out what she meant in words that humans could understand. She could only make bird-sounds, and the huge shapes which looked at her with their shining eyes and dying souls could not understand her, and as she watched over the years and years that were the length of her dream, they faded. They grew weak and pale, and the sun pierced their eyes like a spear. She watched, helpless, as they coughed and rubbed their chests in pain, and she fluttered her wings in fear as their skin grew transparent and insubstantial, as they became wraiths of the weakest kind. She screamed in her dream and it came out of her bird’s beak as a pathetic chirp and she was almost relieved every night when she woke herself up with the sound of her own shouting because at least it was _human_ … No. She never told the boys about those dreams. But they knew all the same.

 

_“Can I see your hand for a second?”_

_“Why?”_

_“Hm. No reason.”_

_“Everything okay, Beatrice?”_

_“Yeah, Greg. Everything’s fine.”_

There are many kinds of silence, just as many as there are kinds of noise. Perhaps the most unnerving kind of silence (particularly when one is alone) is the kind that sinks over a dark room after a person has just finished screaming. It’s a sort of ringing, humming silence; as if the room is absorbing your fear and listening patiently to what you are going to do next. The three of them had become very used to this kind of silence, but that did not mean that they enjoyed it. The old house they lived in was big enough and spacious enough that they could each have their own bedroom, but there were many, many nights where the empty pervasive silence became too much. Sometimes Greg would pad on near-silent feet up the hall to Wirt’s bedroom and push open the door quietly. He’d climb into the bed and curl up in the covers, and Wirt would wake up just enough to draw him into a loose hug, a wordless reassurance. Sometimes, when Greg opened the door, Wirt would not be in his bed. Then he would walk up the stairs to where Beatrice slept, in the attic bedroom, and look inside. And there Wirt would be, lanky frame spread out over the bed, with Beatrice holding him in the same way he would hold Greg on other nights, and Greg would know that he was not alone in his nightmares. He would climb onto the bed and hug Beatrice’s other side, curling up like he was still small, never mind that he was almost all grown-up now. They’d all wake up in the morning in a tangle of legs and arms and blankets, with the nightmares already fading like so much mist.  

 

Sometimes when Greg walked in, Beatrice and Wirt were facing each other, breathing each other’s air, noses centimeters from touching and hands in each other’s hair. On those nights, Greg would go back downstairs and sit in the square of moonlight falling through the window of his bedroom. Those nights, he knew, were for Wirt and Beatrice alone.

 

In the mornings after particularly hard nights, when all of them woke up with wide eyes and clenched fists, lake-water filling their vision, they took it slow. Woke up gradually, all of them taking comfort in each other. Made breakfast together in the cold kitchen, the clinking pots and pans grounding them to the present. They were a family, they three, a desperate, loving trio. If they held too tight to each other, it was because they knew what it was like to have each other ripped away by water and by time.

 

_“Wirt? Do you ever wish we could go back?”_

_“No.”_

_  
“Me neither.” _

**Author's Note:**

> [bill cipher laugh]
> 
> i can be found on tumblr at dumbkili.tumblr.com and if u ever want another installment of this verse or another fic (be it lotr, gf, otgw, gorillaz, whatever you want) hmu okay


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